Although I was well aware of the existence of analog synthesizers since an electronics teacher told me about it half a life back I never considered them as something to really own. It was a few years back when I started actually buying electronic music equipment. My first synth was the Neutron, which I paired with a Keystep and a Drumbrute. But that setup didn’t work out for me. The Neutron was cramped and confusing, the Keystep unintuitive and the Drumbrute simply was the Drumbrute as described everywhere. I felt like I needed more surface area per function and after short consideration I sold everything and bought a Matriarch. It satisfied my craving at first but needless to say you can’t make music with one synth or at least not the way I want to. Recording stuff and basically just using my synth as a source for samples I could have just downloaded somewhere else doesn’t do the trick for me. I just want to make music as I would with any natural instrument with the advantage that synths can give me a complete band at hand.
Since I always liked to build stuff and also have a quite good understanding of electronics I started building further stuff to complement my setup. I chose LMNCs Kosmo format but since the Matriarch has minijacks and I already had the cables I went with minijacks. Although it looks like a modular synth I view it more like a traditional setup with instruments and effects and sequencers all connected together. The modular approach brings some advantages, for example you don’t have to think about power supply and housing of each module. Furthermore it makes everything somewhat tidy and neat and most of all a wall of knobs in a wooden case simply looks great!
Most of the modules are based on popular designs, but I adapted them to my needs. I plan to document the modules and my modifications as well as any projects to come on this site, so stay tuned!